The ninth annual Bay Area Science Festival opens this weekend, featuring a wide range of nearly 50 science, environmental and technology activities at a variety of locations throughout the Bay Area.

On Friday, public tours are offered at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a neuroscience lab at UC San Francisco. In the evening, a panel discussion about the future of land conservation in California — featuring speakers from the UC Natural Reserve System, UC Berkeley’s College of Natural Resources and the East Bay Regional Park District — will describe how science-based land stewardship can ensure a vibrant California for the decades ahead.

The weekend’s lineup includes Saturday’s “Discovery Day” at CSU East Bay, San Francisco’s Consulate General of Mexico and the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in Santa Rosa, as well as search for birds in Palo Alto with the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory. On Sunday, scientists at Berkeley’s Innovative Genomics Institute invite the public to see the labs where they perform CRISPR gene editing.

The nine-day event also offers weekday visits to UCSF’s Human Performance Center and the Presidio’s Archeology Lab, as well as astronomer Andrew Fraknoi’s update on moon and a “town hall” about climate change and dam removal on America’s rivers.

The festival culminates with Discovery Day at San Francisco’s Oracle Park, where visitors can race robots, run on a liquid pool and meet the scientists who are changing the world in hundreds of hands-on experiments, games and demonstrations.

Lisa M. Krieger is a science writer at The Mercury News, covering research, scientific policy and environmental news from Stanford University, the University of California, NASA-Ames, U.S. Geological Survey and other Bay Area-based research facilities. Lisa also contributes to the Videography team. She graduated from Duke University with a degree in biology. Outside of work, she enjoys photography, backpacking, swimming and bird-watching.

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